Vote Sought on Public School ‘Exodus’

T.C. Pinckney, of Alexandria, Va.,
wants the Southern Baptist Convention to vote this summer on a
resolution urging Christians to leave public schools. A committee
must first approve his proposal.
—Photograph by Allison Shelley/Education Week

Sitting in a wing chair inside his modest brick house—an American
flag fluttering out front—T.C. Pinckney explains why he is
petitioning the Southern Baptist Convention to urge Christian parents
to remove their children from public schools.

"In the Bible," he says, "God assigns the responsibility for the
education of the children to the parents, not the government." Thus, he
says through his white beard and mustache, parents should, ideally,
home-school their children.

If that’s not possible, he adds, they should send their
children to Christian schools.

Mr. Pinckney, a retired U.S. Air Force brigadier general who flew
combat missions in Vietnam, is asking the largest Protestant
denomination in the United States to allow its representatives to vote
next month on a resolution calling on Christian parents to abandon the
public schools.

Even if his request is denied, some Southern Baptists and other
evangelical Christians say the fact that such an action is being
proposed is a sign of many Christians’ growing unhappiness with
public education.

"Certainly, there is a growing discontent about the public schools,"
said Paul Hetrick, the vice president of media relations for Focus on
the Family, a Christian nonprofit organization in Colorado Springs,
Colo., that promotes publications and videos among conservative and
many moderate Christians. "The resolution is a reflection of that
concern."

In early June, a 10-person committee will decide if it will bring
Mr. Pinckney’s proposed resolution up for a vote by the Southern
Baptist Convention when the group meets June 15-16 in Indianapolis for
its annual national meeting.

There is a backup plan if the committee rejects the proposal, said
Bruce N. Shortt, a lawyer and home-schooling father from Houston who is
co-sponsoring the proposal. In that case, he said, he plans to make a
motion for church representatives to consider it—a request that
would require two-thirds approval of the people present.

Regardless of how the resolution gets to the floor, a majority of
the representatives, or messengers, would then have to approve the
measure for it to become official. Some 10,000 church representatives
are expected to attend the denomination’s annual
gathering.

‘Government Schools’

Mr. Pinckney views his resolution as fitting in with the broader
"fundamentalist resurgence" in the Southern Baptist convention that
began in 1979.

The proposed resolution refers to public schools as "government
schools" and calls them "anti-Christian" and "Godless." It criticizes
them for "teaching that the homosexual lifestyle is acceptable."

The resolution says: "Just as it would be foolish for the warrior to
give his arrows to his enemies, it is foolish for Christians to give
their children to be trained in schools run by the enemies of God."

But it’s unlikely that the resolution will make it out of the
resolutions committee, according to Ed Gamble, the executive director
of the Southern Baptist Association of Christian Schools.

He added, though, that he doesn’t consider the authors of the
resolution "totally off the wall." He simply doesn’t view the
resolution as practical.

Southern Baptist churches run about 650 schools, Mr. Gamble said,
and couldn’t cope with droves of parents seeking to enroll their
children in those schools. "It’s a lot like asking people to jump
off the ship when there are no lifeboats ready," he said.

In any case, Mr. Pinckney himself doesn’t believe millions of
parents would immediately pull their children out of public schools.
Resolutions approved by the Southern Baptist Convention are
recommendations, not commands, for the 16.3 million members of the
denomination, he said.

On the other hand, a thumbs-up from the convention could inspire
pastors to preach about a withdrawal from public schools, Mr. Pinckney
said. Churches might also start joining together to create schools, he
added.

Leaving the Mainstream

Robert Parham, the executive director of the Baptist Center for
Ethics, a Nashville, Tenn.-based nonprofit organization that has some
Southern Baptists among its constituents, said the resolution reflects
the nature of Southern Baptist fundamentalism.

Fundamentalists, he said, have gained control of the Southern
Baptist Convention.

Baptist Exodus?: T.C.
Pinckney, a former vice president of the Southern Baptist
Convention, is urging the denomination to advise church members to
remove their children from public schools.
—Photograph by Allison Shelley/Education Week

Mr. Parham said he’s been happy with his own children’s
experience in public schools, and he argued that the proposed
resolution is one more sign that some Southern Baptists want to
withdraw from mainstream American culture.

Another indication of that, he said, is that the convention has
passed a resolution encouraging women to be homemakers and campaigned
for Southern Baptists to boycott the Walt Disney Co. A resolution
urging the boycott said the convention was opposed to the
company’s decision to extend employee benefits to homosexual
couples.

In the 1990s, the Southern Baptist Convention also passed
resolutions supporting home schooling and Christian education, though
it has never gone so far as to say that parents should remove their
children from public schools.

Mr. Pinckney, who has served as a vice president for the Southern
Baptist Convention, said during an interview last week at his house
here in suburban Washington that he was proposing the resolution not as
a means for withdrawal from American society, but rather to make it
stronger.

‘The Promised Land’

At least two grassroots Christian nonprofit groups—both with
annual budgets of $100,000 or less—have endorsed the resolution
and asked Christians through newsletters and the Internet to support
it.

Mr. Shortt is a board member and the Texas coordinator for one of
those organizations, the Exodus Mandate, whose name reflects the call
to leave public schools.

Retired Lt. Colonel E. Ray Moore, a former U.S. Army chaplain, said
he founded the Columbia, S.C.-based organization in 1997.

Mr. Moore, a member of the Plymouth Brethren denomination, said:
"We’re a Christian ministry to encourage Christians to leave
behind state-run public education at the K-12 level and go to the
promised land of Christian schools and Christian-based home
schooling."

Dan Smithwick, an evangelical Christian and the founder and director
of the Lexington, Ky.-based Nehemiah Institute, has tried to get a
similar message across to parents as a guest on radio talk shows and
through the institute’s newsletter.

Ground Rules for Posting
We encourage lively debate, but please be respectful of others. Profanity and personal attacks are prohibited. By commenting, you are agreeing to abide by our user agreement.
All comments are public.